|
Back
Christmas duty rewarded London
Barbican
12/18/1999 - and 19/12
Hector Berlioz: The Childhood of Christ
Carmen Opranisu (Mary), Daniel Galvez Vallejo (Narrator), Simon Keenlyside
(Joseph), Orlin Anastassov (Herod), Robert Lloyd (Householder)
London Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Chorus, Colin Davis (conductor)
Berlioz's The Childhood of Christ fitted handily into the LSO's
Berlioz Odyssey series just before Christmas. The two performances were not
as packed as the various excellent and adequate Messiahs available
in London. But Berlioz's version of the birth of Christ, based on
apocryphal scriptural texts, paintings and French traditions, is more than
an exotic alternative to Handel's oratorio.
Berlioz's fully visualized drama begins operatically with Herod wishing he
were a goatherd instead of a tyrant, and ends with a scene of domestic
cheerfulness as Joseph, Mary and Jesus at last find hospitality in Egypt at
the home of an Ishmaelite carpenter. Where Handel offers a drama of ideas,
Berlioz offers poetic realism which adapts the forms of oratorio into
something that looks forward to Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. A reflective
unaccompanied final chorus nods towards the Handelian and Lutheran
traditions, but it also suggests a night of restful sleep for the refugees
after their miserable flight and persecution (in an anti-Jewish chorus that
seems to echo the Marseillaise).
Colin Davis' reading with the LSO was generally delicate and precise, but
dramatic. The trio of two flutes and a harp, which reworks the
quasi-mediaeval Shepherds' Farewell in near-eastern style, was particularly
delightful. The London Symphony Chorus was wonderful, as the cheerful
Ishmaelite family as well as as the familar shepherds.
The singers were all fine, and committed. Daniel Galvez Vallejo, standing
in for an indisposed Ian Bostridge, sang with a bright tone that seemed out
of place at times, but found plenty of meaning in the narrative. Carmen
Opranisu and Simon Keenlyside were a serene, musical Mary and Joseph. Orlin
Anastassov, last seen at the Barbican as the Pope in Benvenuto
Cellini, was a sinister, heavy Herod. Robert Lloyd was sympathetic as
the Ishmaelite householder.
H.E. Elsom
|
